“A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.”

~Herm Albright, quoted in Reader's Digest, June 1995

I really love this quote. I think it is so true. I’m sure there are some people out there that have that one person in their lives that is ALWAYS positive. I mean positive to the point it makes you sick. I used to not really like people like that very much. They used to really annoy me.

Then I read a story online about one of those annoying people. He was restaurant manager. He was the kind of guy whose employees always came to with their problems. He could always find the good side to any situation, and cheer people up an make them feel better. His positive attitude was contagious. In fact his employees were so loyal that they would follow him to another restaurant when he changed jobs.

One day, the unthinkable happened. He had stepped out of the back door of the restaurant, and forgot to close it as he returned to the office. An armed gunman entered, found him in the office and demanded that he give him the cash in the safe. As he fumbled to dial the safe combination, he slipped. The nervous gunman shot him in the chest. The gunman fled and left him lying on the floor of the office. He was bleeding profusely but still managed to summons help. The ambulance arrived and rushed him to the emergency room. Having lost a lot of blood he was fading in and out of consciousness. He noticed the serious look on the doctor ‘s and nurses faces. He started to get scared, and realized for the first time that the situation might be life threatening. One of the nurses asked him if he was allergic to anything, and his reply was “Yes, bullets”. The tension in the emergency room immediately dissolved. Doctor's rigid faces softened in smiles behind their masks, and nurses giggled. Right then, he had made the decision that things weren't that bad. After all he was still alive, and he was going to fight as hard as he could to stay that way. The operation was successful, and after a few months he fully recovered and went back to work at the restaurant. He was even more positive than he had ever been.

So what does that have to do with fly tying, feathers and fishing? Well, everything. In fact it has everything to do with, well……..everything.

Every morning when you wake up, you’ve got a choice to make. You decide what kind of day you are going to have, and you decide what kind of attitude you are going to have. I’m hoping that when you wake up in the morning (that’s a great thing, you woke up…it could have been worse. You could have been dead, and not woke up!) you will make the decision to have a great day. I hope that when get in your car and head to work, you’re just going to let other people’s stupid driving not annoy you (you could be walking……). I hope that when you are pulling on your waders and putting your rod together, that you are going to have an awesome day of fishing regardless of whether you catch anything (unlike the guy who’s out of work and wondering how he’s going to feed his family). See how it works?